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budman57
Reviews
Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D (2005)
Children of the space race will love this movie
Wow doesn't begin to do justice to the experience of this movie. Thank you Tom Hanks for your passion and for helping us to understand what it was like to be there through this film, and through the mini-series From the Earth to the Moon.
Today I saw Magnificent Desolation at my local IMAX and I highly recommend it to anyone who was a child of the space race or an adult during that time. I found the make-up of the crowd really interesting; a lot of guys in their 40's like me who probably built all the spacecraft models as kids, taking their own children to the movie to show them what going to the moon was all about.
For me, it was like a religious experience. At the beginning there is a shot they created of Buzz Aldrin climbing down the ladder of the lunar module to take his first steps, and the viewer's perspective is of standing about 100 feet away on the surface, watching. It was so realistic I felt I had been transported back in time and was watching the history making event as it actually happened. For a few moments I was overwhelmed at the sudden realization of what Armstrong and Aldrin had experienced, and literally had tears in my eyes while watching the scene.
The 3D effects on the IMAX screen are so good that you find you often need to refocus your eyes to look at different things in the scene. It's a bit disconcerting at first, compared to a normal movie, but after a few minutes you adjust and enjoy the experience.
Shots of the inside of the Apollo 15 lunar module as it was descending to the plain at Hadley were very cool, and looking out the window was almost like being there. It was very realistic. On the lunar surface they did a fantastic job of integrating the high quality still photos taken by the astronauts to create a lunar landscape that was so real looking you would swear you could reach out and pick up a rock to take home.
The movie is relatively short (less than 50 mins.) so the documentary content is brief and concise, focusing on the concept/vision of going to the moon rather than a lot of details about how it was done (for that type of story, see the twelve episodes of From the Earth to the Moon). The documentary sections were interspersed with the re-creation of scenes showing what it was really like to land and work there. I left the theater with a true sense of understanding and awe of what it must have been like to have journeyed to the moon.
Two thumbs up
Legends of the Fall (1994)
Spectacular scenary, moving
Many people find fault with this film... plot too convoluted, trying too hard to be epic, everyone dies, etc... but if you simply sit back and do no more than take in the majestic cinematography and enjoy the moving soundtrack by James Horner, you can consider it an enjoyable two hours.
The mountain scenery is the most spectacular I've ever seen in a film, and probably did a lot for the Montana tourism industry even though it wasn't actually filmed there. For the curious, those incredible mountain vistas and Ludlow ranch were all shot in the Canadian Rocky Mountains half an hour west of Calgary, Alberta. Other recent movies movies shot in the vicinity were Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, and Jackie Chan's Shanghai Noon.
The film takes you through a series of emotional ups and downs as members of the Ludlow clan and their loved ones deal with their demons and die tragic, almost Shakespearean deaths in several cases. To many viewers, this qualifies it as a bad film. Well guess what? Life is like that in many cases, and I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed the fact this film wasn't a lame, saccharin, feel good excuse of a movie. The real majesty of this film is that it shows the reality of life. It isn't easy and it isn't fair. You have to deal with it with dignity and move on. That's what I liked about the film, and viewed to be a nice change from the typical drivel that plays in theaters. That, and the incredibly beautiful Canadian scenery.